Wagner James Au reports on virtual worlds, VR & Internet culture

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Oculus Quest Install Base on Track to Surpass 1 Million+ Units By End of 2019

The new VR HMD sales estimate from Superdata* is pretty good news for Oculus Quest: The standalone device sold 347,000+ units in its first two months on the market. (It went on sale in late May of this year.) Safely assuming those sales numbers stay at least as steady throughout the rest of the year -- and Zuckerberg claims** the Quest is selling "as fast as we make them"-- Oculus Quest will not only continue to sell faster than PSVR, but it'll easily reach an install base over 1 million by the end of this year.

Which is not bad! That would place the Quest second only to PSVR in terms of install base size, which leads the industry by far with about 5 million units sold so far. (Sony reported 4.2 million sales last March.)

Then again, it's not great:

That still puts the market for VR content on all of the top VR platforms far below even a single leading videogame console. So we need to be realistic about this relatively strong sales growth. Then again, it is enough to maintain decent interest among studios and publishers to create content for the Quest. Indeed, in a recent meeting with a big entertainment brand, their first question about VR was, "Can you make this compatible with Oculus Quest?"

*Some readers have raised some skepticism about Superdata's sales numbers, but in this case at least, they fit what Facebook itself has reported. As I blogged last June:

At Vox Media’s Code conference, [Facebook VP of AR/VR Andrew Bosworth] detailed that in the first two weeks of sales there has been $5 million in content sales. We have not gotten any details on device sales, though Facebook has never shares sales data on their VR products...

Assume each Quest owner buys an average of one game at $30, that comes out to 166,666 units; then again, if the average is more like $15 per owner, that would be 333,333 units. To be on the safe side, let's just say low six figures in HMD sales in the first two weeks is most likely.

** Yes, I know anything Zuckerberg "claims" deserves serious scrutiny, but seeing as he said this on an investor's call, he'd be in serious trouble if this was exposed to be a fudge.